SpaceX pricing its IPO at $135: Strong demand secures "fixed price" deal!

According to insiders, SpaceX has informed underwriters that the company plans to maintain its proposed initial public offering price of $135 per share, with no price range and no downward adjustments, indicating satisfaction with investor demand during the roadshow process. The planned pricing will support raising approximately 75 billion dollars, making this the largest IPO in history and valuing Elon Musk's company at around 1.77 trillion dollars. If underwriters exercise the full overallotment option, total funds raised will reach $86.2 billion, surpassing the previous record of $29.4 billion set by Saudi Aramco in 2019, making it the largest public offering by a listed company in history. The stock is expected to be issued on June 11th and officially listed for trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and Nasdaq Decks Exchange on June 12th under the symbol "SPCX". This decision is significant because companies typically use investor meetings during the roadshow to assess market demand and then finalize pricing. Although sources have cautioned that the offering price could still change before trading begins, SpaceX's current stance suggests that no adjustments are deemed necessary by management despite the unprecedented size of the transaction. Behind this pricing decision is SpaceX's extreme confidence in investor demand - according to sources familiar with the roadshow process, institutional investor inquiries far exceed the usual levels of large IPO roadshows, with demand outstripping the capacity of conventional fundraising volumes. This strong market response highlights Wall Street's strong interest in investing in one of the world's most valuable private companies. SpaceX's leading position in commercial launch, satellite communication services through Starlink, and its increasingly crucial role in national security missions make this IPO one of the most anticipated market debuts in recent years. "One-price" strategy: Breaking Wall Street rules, demonstrating absolute confidence In the U.S. stock market, the standard process for large IPOs is to first announce a price range (e.g. $120-$140), collect institutional investors' feedback during a roadshow spanning several weeks, and finally determine the final offering price within the range based on subscription multiples. The core logic of this mechanism is "price discovery" - letting the market tell you how much the company is worth. However, SpaceX has chosen a completely different path: locking in at $135, with no range, no dynamic adjustments. This strategy is extremely rare in the U.S. stock market but more common in Asian and European markets. "This is no longer 'arrogance,'" one Wall Street investment banker involved in the IPO described to the media, "this is a 'take it or leave it' attitude. SpaceX is telling the market: we don't need your price suggestions, we know how much we're worth." This "one-price" strategy is viable primarily due to an extreme imbalance in supply and demand. Reportedly, SpaceX plans to allocate up to 30% of the IPO shares to retail investors, corresponding to a whopping $22.5 billion in retail subscription amounts. This figure exceeds the total net buying volume of retail investors in Tesla, Inc. from the past year, and even surpasses the total amount of retail funds flowing into all asset classes in the past month. On the institutional side, the joint syndicate of main underwriters including Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase, along with 18 other participating banks, nearly covers all top-tier investment banks globally. SpaceX is even negotiating service fees with underwriters, planning to lower underwriting fees to below 0.75% - considering the fundraising amount of $75 billion, the underwriting syndicate will still receive approximately $500 million in commission income. For SpaceX, this is a true "seller's market" game. A major feature of this IPO is its high scarcity. The 5.556 billion shares represent only 4.2% of the company's total outstanding shares, with the remaining 95.8% held long-term by Musk and other insiders. The company adopts a full primary market issuance structure, with existing shareholders not selling their stakes at the IPO, and the first unlocking period delayed until at least the second quarter of the 2027 fiscal year's financial results. Musk himself will also face a 366-day lock-up period. Controlling approximately 82.4% of SpaceX's voting rights through holding Class A and Class B shares, Musk's paper holdings are valued at an estimated $866.5 billion. Following the IPO, calculated at $135 per share, Musk's net worth will reach $988 billion, nearing the first trillionaire. Financial "double-edged sword": Starlink as the lone support, AI black hole continues to devour Beyond the narrative and valuation debates, SpaceX's financial data itself presents a stark duality, posing significant challenges for investors in assessing value. The prospectus shows that SpaceX generated revenue of $18.7 billion in the full year 2025, a marked increase from $14 billion in 2024, but net losses in the same period plummeted from a profit of $791 million in 2024 to a loss of $4.94 billion. By the first quarter of 2026, losses further expanded to around $4.3 billion. Specific business performance showed an extreme differentiation: Starlink - the only profitable pillar. In the first quarter of 2026, Starlink business revenue was approximately $3.26 billion, accounting for 69% of total revenue; operating profit was about $1.19 billion. As of the end of March 2026, Starlink had reached 10.3 million subscribed users, almost doubling from a year ago. With nearly 10,000 satellites in orbit, service coverage in 164 countries and regions, Starlink has transformed from a high-cost experiment into a global scale cash "money-printing machine." It is worth noting that Starlink's average revenue per user (ARPU) has decreased from $99 in 2023 to $66 in the first quarter of 2026, a 33% drop over three years - international expansion has increased the user base but diluted per-customer earnings due to the rise in low-price market share. Space business - strategic losses. In the first quarter of 2026, revenue was $619 million, with an operating loss of $662 million. The losses from rocket launches are essentially infrastructure investments: each launch contributes to deploying satellites for Starlink and validating the reusability of Starship. SpaceX AI - still in a massive "bleeding" phase. Revenue in the first quarter of 2026 was $818 million, with an operating loss of $2.469 billion. The full-year loss in 2025 was $6.355 billion, with cash burn mainly concentrated in computing power, data centers, and talent acquisition. SpaceX plans to use the IPO proceeds to expand its AI business, rocket launches, and satellite infrastructure. However, the fundraising also comes with certain "liquidity pressure" - within six months of listing, the company must repay at least a portion of the $20 billion in bridge loans, using partial debt financing and proceeds from the IPO, previously used mainly to replace high-yield junk bonds of Musk's other companies. To ease the financial pressure on the AI business, SpaceX has signed a contract with Anthropic, providing AI computing services to the latter, with the contract amounting to $1.25 billion per month. Despite both parties being able to terminate the agreement with 90 days' notice, this order still provides expected cash flow support for the company in the coming years. Governance controversy: Musk's "super control" raises shareholder protection concerns SpaceX's IPO structure has also prompted discussions about corporate governance - post-listing SpaceX is not the "public company" as typically understood by investors. The prospectus shows that Musk controls approximately 84.4% of the voting rights through holding Class B shares (10 votes per share, compared to 1 vote for Class A shares), owning 93.6% of B-class shares, enough to decide 51% of the board seats and prevent any resolutions to remove himself from leadership positions. Moreover, Musk's equity reward mechanism is linked to the Mars colonization plan. In January 2026, he received 10 billion performance-linked restricted shares, with conditions for redemption requiring SpaceX to reach specific milestones in market value and establish a "permanent human settlement on Mars with at least one million inhabitants." This means that financial returns for Wall Street investors are institutionally tied to a multi-planetary human goal decades in the future. The non-profit organization Alliance to Protect Shareholder Value released a statement on May 26, criticizing SpaceX's governance policy as attempting to "severely weaken shareholder protection in a novel and reckless manner while giving SpaceX leadership nearly all administrative powers." Critics point out that under this governance structure, minority shareholders have virtually no checks and balances to influence the company's strategic direction.